Dead Reckoning
by TitansRule
Summary: Jess is justifiably worried when Don freezes up under pressure, but confronting him will have to wait - there's a 'phantom killer' on the loose ... Story #77 in my Kindred Spirits series.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own CSI:NY. I do own Isobel.  
****Series: Kindred Spirits  
****Spoilers: 6x04 **_**Dead Reckoning.**_

* * *

Dead Reckoning

"Erm, Detective?"

Jess heaved a heavy sigh. "Isobel, we've talked about this."

"Jessica," Isobel amended, as they reached the next floor. "Aren't you still on restricted duty?"

Jess smiled slightly. "Only for two more days. But you're role of detective has officially begun and, as your training officer, I am obliged to accompany you to crime scenes."

The building they were in was in quite an upscale part of Manhattan, and the flights of stairs were longer than most, since all of the apartments were on two floors.

The landlord had made a scheduled visit to all of the tenants to do some routine maintenance work on the showerheads, but had received no answer at the last apartment.

Concerned by this, since he had been assured by Deborah Carter that she would be home, he had unlocked the door with his master key to find Deborah's husband, Kevin, lying dead in a pool of his own blood.

"Jess?" Isobel asked, as they began to climb yet another flight of stairs. "Are you alright?"

Jess closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Although she didn't want people fussing over her like she was about to break in two, she also didn't want to bite Isobel's head off for worrying. "I'm fine, Isobel. If I wasn't, I'd still be at home."

The apartment was already roped off, and the uniformed officer on the door held the crime scene tape up so they could duck under it.

"You beat us to it." Jess commented, seeing Mac and Stella already processing the scene.

"We were just around the corner." Stella explained. "No morning can start without coffee."

"Too true." Jess sighed.

"I'm guessing the cause of death was stab wounds?" Isobel said drying, observing the body and the bloody carving knife lying next to it.

"I've counted seventeen." Mac confirmed.

"Seventeen?" Jess repeated under her breath. "Jesus, someone hated this guy." Her phone rang and she moved away from the body to answer it. "Angell."

"_Hey, it's me." _Don's voice responded. _"Listen, I need you to …"  
_

"Is this something to do with work?" Jess interrupted.

"_Yeah, I need …"  
_

"Hang on." Jess handed the phone to Isobel. "It's for you."

"Wilson." Isobel raised an eyebrow, smirking at Jess, and covered the mouth-piece. "He wants to know if I dragged you up stairs."

Jess rolled her eyes. "Tell him I walked."

"She walked." Isobel covered the phone again. "He says you're overdoing it."

"Tell him to get back to work." Jess shot back.

"She says to get back to work." Isobel relayed. "Was there a problem, Detective?" Her brown furrowed. "We're already there. Yes, he is. Okay, we'll be here." She hung up and handed Jess her phone back. "The wife did it."

Mac looked up. "I hope you've got more than a hunch behind that, Detective."

Isobel nodded. "Detective Flack's bringing her up so she can explain. She walked into the precinct this morning and confessed to murdering her husband."

"Well, that's convenient." Jess remarked. "What do we do in the meantime, Wilson?"

"Canvas the apartment?" Isobel guessed.

Jess raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Telling you." Isobel answered, more confidently.

"Right. Let's get to it then." Jess moved over to the kitchen.

Isobel followed her, lowering her voice. "Tell me to mind my own business, but … don't you think you might be overdoing it just a little bit? I mean, those were a lot of stairs, and you're not even officially back to work yet, so maybe …" she trailed off, fidgeting under Jess's stern look.

Finally, Jess cracked a smile. "Oh … you turned into Detective Flack and didn't tell me."

* * *

"I can't believe she's still sticking to her story." Jess muttered, more to herself than to Stella.

The two women were standing in the observation room, watching Deborah Carter repeat herself for the tenth time that morning.

Her confession had seemed cut and dry, until Stella had found another woman's DNA at the crime scene.

Deborah insisted there was no other woman there, despite Mac and Don's attempts to get her to say otherwise.

"Yeah, she's covering for someone." Stella frowned. "Even if she was telling the truth, I find it hard to believe that she reacted like that to an affair."

Jess shrugged half-heartedly. "I guess so."

"You understand it?" Stella asked, almost incredulously.

"When I realised my ex was cheating," Jess said slowly, "I'll be honest and say that I never even considered killing him. But then she had time while he was upstairs to get her head around it; I just went into shock. Even if I hadn't … even though I had a loaded gun on me at the time … I don't think I would have killed him."

"But …?" Stella prompted.

Jess smirked. "I still went and told Matt, even though I knew he'd storm round and beat the crap out of him."

Stella chuckled. "Fair enough. I'm curious about the other woman … do you think she could have killed him?"

Jess took her attention away from the three people in interrogation. "Come on, Stell; if Deborah Carter would have killed her husband for cheating – and I believe she would, even if the evidence is telling us that she didn't – why would she cover up for the other woman?"

"Good point." Stella conceded. "Where's Wilson?"

"Observing her first autopsy." Jess said, pulling a face. "Poor girl."

They were distracted from their discussion by Mac leaving interrogation, and Stella gave her a smile and hurried after him.

Jess was about to leave, when Don's voice caught her attention.

"If you could go back to that moment … just you and him, in that apartment … would you do it again? Would you stick the knife in his chest?"

Frowning, Jess paused at the door. It wasn't like Don to engage suspects in conversation after interrogations were over. She'd heard him use that tactic in the interrogations themselves, but he didn't sound judgemental or confrontational. He sounded curious.

"All seventeen times." Deborah answered flatly. "Regret's a waste of time, Detective."

Don stared at her a second before pushing himself away from the wall. "Right."

"You can't change the past." Deborah continued.

"Stand up. Turn around." Don cuffed her. "No matter how okay you think you are, when you close your eyes at night … it's gonna haunt you."

_Well … that's not concerning at all._

* * *

"Jess? I need to talk to you."

Jess hesitated. On one hand, with the 'Phantom Killer' on the loose, they could hardly afford to take tea breaks. On the other hand, Mac was sufficiently distracted by Aiden's rundown of all the crimes the 'Phantom Killer' had been involved in, and Lindsay was very visibly worried.

"This to do with the case?" Jess asked quietly.

"No, Don." Lindsay told her.

Jess closed her eyes, remembering Don's words to Deborah Carter in interrogation. "Not here."

Lindsay nodded, leading her out of the lab and to the ladies' bathroom down the hall. She checked that all the stalls were empty and locked the door. "Look, don't tell him I told you this, because he's insisting everything's fine, but … You heard what happened with Marcia Vasquez, right?"

Jess frowned slightly. "I know that there was a stand-off."

"She pulled a knife." Lindsay confirmed. "Told Don that he'd have to shoot her or she'd kill him."

Jess's heart constricted for a second, before she was able to remind herself that she'd seen Don since the arrest. "But he didn't have to, because you took her down."

"No, I took her down, so he didn't have to." Lindsay corrected. "If she hadn't been as distracted as she was, I would never have managed it; Don was the only one with a shot, Jess, and he froze."

"You're sure he froze?" Jess asked. "He wasn't just – I don't know – trying to avoid shooting someone?"

"When Mac confronted him, Don told him to make it official or drop it." Lindsay said softly.

Jess groaned, leaning against the bathroom wall. "Alright, Linds, thanks for telling me. I'll talk to him when all this is over."

"If it's ever over." Lindsay added darkly, as they left the restroom.

It didn't seem like their colleagues had noticed them leaving – or if they had, they didn't care. They slipped into the lab as Aiden finished.

"The thing is," Aiden concluded, "even though Marcia is responsible for these three deaths, there's no way she could have been at the other crime scenes."

"There's got to be an explanation." Jess said, leaning back in her chair. "Isobel?"

Isobel started, having been staring at the case report for the last few minutes. "Huh?"

"You looked deep in thought." Jess prompted. "What's up?"

"Well …" Isobel said slowly, picking up the case report. "This says that the unknown DNA was found on a partially eaten bread roll."

"We did." Stella confirmed.

"And the unknown DNA is female." Isobel continued.

"It is." Mac nodded.

"But I watched the autopsy on Kevin Carter." Isobel paused, pulling a face. "Dr Hammerback fished out the stomach contents. He found a piece of bread, not even partially digested. If Kevin Carter took a bite out of the bread roll, how come you found female DNA?"

"She's got a point." Danny remarked. "We've all been so focussed on this unknown DNA that we haven't considered how weird it is that it was even at our crime scene."

"Okay," Jess frowned, "so how does female DNA end up on a bread roll that had been bitten into by a man?"

"Maybe the evidence got contaminated somehow." Don suggested.

"I hope you're not accusing this lab …" Mac began.

Don held up his hands. "I never said that, Mac, and I never would. I said 'somehow'."

"Yes, but with the same DNA?" Stella asked sceptically. "I see your point, Flack, but I don't think that's possible. The only way the same DNA would end up in all this evidence through contamination would be if one of the lab techs was mishandling – not only are they all in the system, the evidence was all handled by different labs."

"Okay, then let's look at what all these crime scenes have in common." Jess said tiredly. "There must be something."

For a few minutes, everyone was silent, looking over the cases. Then Adam walked in, muttering under his breath.

"What's wrong, Adam?" Aiden asked, without looking up.

"It's Haylen." Adam almost growled. "She's done it again."

"Done what?" Lindsay asked blankly.

"She's moving things!" Adam snapped, ignoring Danny's warning look. "I have things a certain way, and she's changing things, and I don't like it!"

If it was anyone else, Jess might have laughed, but the look of utter frustration on Adam's face stopped her.

"The test-tubes are where the cotton swabs should be, the swabs are where the gloves should be …"

Jess and Isobel both gasped at the same time. "Cotton swabs!"

Adam stopped his rant, looking confused. "What?"

"Cotton swabs!" Jess repeated. "That's where the DNA comes from!"

"That's the link!" Isobel continued. "Every single piece of evidence with the unknown DNA was collected using a cotton swab!"

"There's no way …" Danny said softly, staring at the report he was holding. "There's no way it's that simple."

"Only one way to find out." Lindsay hurried to one of the work benches, grabbed a cotton swab and stuck into her mouth, rubbing it across the inside of her cheek. "Here." She handed it to Adam. "ASAP please."

DNA testing took longer in real life that it did in the movies, but it was the actual search that they had to wait for, combined with the sheer volume of DNA evidence that came through sometimes.

It didn't take Adam long to extract the DNA and create a profile. Once he had, he looked up with a grin. "They're right. I've got two separate profiles. And one of them's a match to the Phantom Killer."

"And we all saw me swab." Lindsay added. "We watched the DNA leave my mouth and go straight to Adam."

Mac stood up, grabbing his jacket. "I'm heading to the factory. Stella, Sinclair's about to make an announcement to the press. Stall him for as long as possible."

* * *

"Long day, huh?" Don commented, collapsing onto the couch with a sigh.

"Long day." Jess agreed slowly, locking the gun-box. She watched her fiancé close his eyes wearily, and mentally prepped herself for the upcoming conversation. "So I had an interesting chat with Lindsay today …"

Don groaned, cutting her off. "I'm fine, Jess."

Jess raised an eyebrow. "Fine about what? She might have telling me about how Lucy's about to say her first word for all you know. But since you're 'fine', you want to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about." Don said, not opening his eyes. "I didn't shoot someone. End of story."

Jess rolled her eyes. "That's not what Lindsay said. She said you froze."

"I didn't want to hit her." Don said.

"She was at an angle." Jess pointed out.

"There were customers in that diner."

"She said you were the only one with a shot."

"She looked too much like you."

Jess didn't have an immediate retort. "What?"

"She looked too much like you." Don repeated, opening his eyes to look at her. "We were in a diner … it took me by surprise …"

Jess pulled her hair out of its tie and moved over to the couch, straddling his waist. "So nothing to do with the last time you fired in the line of duty then."

Don raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"'No matter how okay you think you are, when you close your eyes at night, it's going to haunt you'." Jess quoted. "Where did that come from?"

"I just couldn't understand how she could kill someone she loved." Don muttered. "I can't imagine ever hurting you."

Jess smiled softly. "Are you sure that's it?"

"I'm sure." Don smiled up at her, running his hands over her denim-clad thighs. "I'm fine."

Jess wasn't convinced – his smile didn't quite reach his eyes, and his gaze wasn't quite meeting hers. But she knew Don well enough to know that pushing the subject was only going to cause problems right now. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes, I am." Don answered with a smirk, sliding his hands up to rest on her waist. "Starving."

"Mmm." Jess leaned down to kiss him, her lips lingering on his. "You want food?"

"I never said that." Don pointed out, his smirk widening.

Jess laughed, relenting as he stood up, swinging her into his arms. She would work out how to deal with what was bothering him eventually.

But right now … Well, she was pretty hungry too.

* * *

**AN: If anyone has anything they'd like to see in 'Battle Scars' – that's the one where the dancer's killed by a friend with an air-rifle in an attempt to 'save' his girlfriend like he couldn't before – let me know.**


	2. AN

**Erm ... Hi, everyone!**

**As you may have noticed, my record for CSINY fics has somewhat drooped over the last year, and I can only apologise whole-heartedly for that. I have other commitments, both in real life (a degree), and in fanfiction (my Harry Potter readers tend to be a lot more vocal).**

**And, I realise, this is the worst time for my brain to say, "Hey, you know what needs to be looked at again?", but that's what it's done.**

**I have ideas, really I do, and I fully intend on completing this series, and Impossible, at some point. In the meantime, I'm going over what already exists and sprucing it up a bit, maybe making them a bit longer, since what got posted on here were mostly first drafts, which means I'm breaking the first rule of writing (first drafts don't count!)**

**However, I'm not doing that on ****_here_****, because over the last few months I've had a fair few disagreements with this site - in fact, my Harry Potter stories have been pulled altogether (by me, not by them).**

**I'm not going to remove my other stories, but I am posting the revision somewhere else.**

**And, yes, I said revision. Rather than posting separate oneshots, I'm planning on combining them into two multi-chapter stories, so Seasons 3-5 will be 'Kindred Spirits', and Season 6 onwards will be 'Walking With Angels'.**

**The first chapter of ****_Kindred Spirits_**** is up, and can be found on under TitansRule. That site doesn't allow anonymous comments, I don't think, but you can head over to my new blog at .com, which does.**

**Thank you so much for your patience, and your continuing support.**

**TitansRule**


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